Tenement Museum
- Year
- 1988
- Style
- Italianate
- City
- Manhattan, NY
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The Tenement Museum occupies two former tenement buildings, 97 and 103 Orchard Street on the Lower East Side, built in the Italianate style. Between roughly 1863 and 2015 the two buildings housed an estimated 15,000 residents from more than 20 nations, and in 1988 the site became a museum devoted to that immigrant experience. It is designated a National Historic Landmark.
the building
97 Orchard Street. Contracted in 1863 by Prussian immigrant Lukas Glockner, the building originally held 22 apartments and a basement saloon. It was later modified to meet the New York State Tenement House Act, gaining indoor plumbing, an air shaft, and eventually gas and electric service; four stoop-level and two basement apartments were converted to retail, leaving 16 apartments. In 1935 the landlord evicted the residents and boarded the upper floors rather than keep modifying the building.
the style
The museum's buildings are Italianate, the common idiom for New York's speculative tenement construction in the mid-to-late 1800s.
More on Italianatesignificance
The Tenement Museum is a National Historic Landmark and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, recognized for documenting the lived history of immigrant tenement life on the Lower East Side.
nearby
- First Roumanian-American congregation
- Beth Hamedrash Hagadol
- University Settlement Society of New York
- Bowery Savings Bank
- Germania Bank Building
- S. Jarmulowsky Bank Building